On September 3, a U.S.-listed company closed its takeover of the only scaled producer of all four magnet rare earths outside Asia.
Thirteen days later, Brazil's president signed a law that would have let his government stop it.
That gap explains most of what is really at stake in Brazil's October 25 runoff.
The company was USA Rare Earth. The target was Serra Verde, owner of the Pela Ema mine in Goiás state. The cash-and-stock deal valued Serra Verde at roughly $2.8 billion, and Washington's fingerprints were all over it.
The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation had lined up a financing package of up to $565 million.
The Department of War committed $750 million to a special-purpose vehicle built to buy the mine's output.
That vehicle holds a 15-year agreement to take all of Phase 1 production, with guaranteed price floors for the magnet metals, including dysprosium and terbium.
For Washington, this was the closest thing yet to a Western Hemisphere answer to Beijing's grip on heavy rare earths.
Then the gate went up.
The Council That Changes the Math